xperiences of a Supreme Personality

Experiences of a Supreme
Personality and Extraterrestrials

From: http://www.raphaelvishanu-world.at/pers.html

Michael Persinger
This article presents evidence that the "visitor" experience
is a more intense variant of the "sense of a presence," a
phenomenon frequently reported by normal people. (Approximately
30 percent of 500 normal adults who have been assessed in the Neuroscience
Laboratory over the last 15 years have reported this experience.)
The "presence" is felt most frequently in the early morning
hours. If the person is asleep, he or she will suddenly awaken,
often feeling some fear or even immobility.

Such experiences are thought to be correlated with mesiobasal
(amygdaloid-hippocampal) portions of the temporal lobes.2 These
areas of the brain are associated inter alia with the experience
of meaningfulness, the sense of self and its relationship to space-time
(with its religious or "cosmic" associations), fear,
dreams, experiences of movements (like spinning or floating), smell,
and memory storage and retrieval. Consequently, there should be
(and there are) references to the sense of presence; feelings of
spinning or floating, or of vibrations; dreamlike sequences; and
fear (or irritability). Because an important part of the temporal
lobe receives visual information from the edges of the visual field,
flickering sensations can occur in the upper peripheral vision.

If the neural substrate of the "visitor" experience
is characterized by transient electrochemical fluctuation within
temporal lobe structures, then: (1) the phenomenological nature
of these experiences should reflect temporal lobe function, and
(2) people with personality profiles that are strongly correlated
with temporal lobe lability should be prone to having these experiences.
Both of these observations have been substantiated by clinical
evidence.

That either endogenous or exogenous (surgical) stimulation of
deep temporal lobe structures, such as the hippocampus and especially
the amygdala, can evoke specific phenomenological patterns, is
well established.3, 4 The specific details are determined by the
etiology (e.g., a space-occupying lesion, electrical anomaly, vasospasm);
the location of the lesion; and the amount of cumulative brain
damage.5 Patients with partial complex or limbic (temporal lobe)
epilepsy frequently report such symptoms as a sense of a presence;
depersonalization (feelings of unreality or out-of-body experiences);
hearing and/or knowing from "internal" sources, vestibular
sensations (most commonly internal vibrations, rising sensations
in the thorax, and floating or spinning sensations). Anxiety or
panic, forced thinking, smelling odd odors,6 and sacral proprioception
in the genitals and anal sphincter have been reported. Females
may have erotic experiences. Visual phenomena vary from shadows,
entities, or colors in the peripheral field to complex animated
sequences dominated by substantial fantasy elements that are not
always simple reiterations of personal experience.7

Most importantly, the experient is frequently convinced that what
he or she has perceived is real; although details may not be clear,
the person is sure that something profound has occurred. Typical
behaviors between seizures 8, 9 include a widening of affect (e.g.,
odd events, even if they occur infrequently, still acquire a special
meaning); multiple references to psi phenomena; the conviction
that one has communed with an entity or god and has been chosen
for a special destiny; hypergraphia (the desire or need to record
the significant experiences); obsession with themes such as the
nature of the universe; and the desire to proselytize. 10 Invariably
there is amnesia and a history of time loss. Affective disorders
and alterations in sexual behavior are common.

There is now evidence of a continuum of temporal lobe lability
or sensitivity.11, 12, 13 People who display complex partial epilepsy
(without convulsions) occupy the extreme portion of this continuum.
Its existence is based upon the occurrence of microseizure-like
activity that happens routinely during normal REM sleep14 and the
linear relationship between the number of mesiobasal temporal lobe
neurons recruited during electrical transients and the intensity
and display of epileptic experiences. 15 The concept is a logical
development of Bear's sensory-limbic hyperconnectionism. 16 Its
validity within the normal population has been indicated by enhanced
cross-modal matching in individuals who display enhanced temporal
lobe signs. 17

SEVERAL STUDIES show that normal people who display quantitatively
more temporal lobe (bipolar T3, T4) alpha activity (and hence a
greater range in activity or lability) during test conditions also
experience the phenomenological profile evoked by limbic seizures.
18, 19 Although qualitatively similar to experiences associated
with such seizures, the normal temporal lobe experiences are less
intense, and there is no electroencephalograph ic or clinical evidence
of seizures. Special populations (poets and writers, for example),
who display an enhanced proclivity for limbic experiences, also
show an increased incidence of small sharp spikes during resting
EEG recordings, especially in the early nocturnal hours.20 The
spikes are similar to those reported in people with familial associations
of manic depression,21 and the number of spikes is positively correlated
with the number and frequency of benign limbic experiences.

These clinically normal individuals ("normal" as defined
by the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory JMMPIJ) more
frequently report "feeling the presence of a Being or close
contact with a universal consciousness during the early morning
hours," lifting sensations or vibrations before falling asleep, "an
experience ofa smell from childhood just before I fell down," depersonalization,
and intense bouts of meaningfulness between 2:00 A.m. and 4:00
A.M. Normal individuals, who have no history of limbic seizures,
also report widening of affect in conjunction with personal interpretations
of mundane events-e.g., "When I have a tough personal decision
to make, I will get a'sign'and then I will know what to do." Strong
positive correlations exist between temporal lobe symptoms and
exotic beliefs (time,traveling) or psi experiences such as telepathy,
clairvoyance, and precognition.22 People who report temporal lobe
signs display an unusual proclivity for reading or writing prose
or poetry and are prone to generate and remember vivid visual imagery,
especially that concerning childhood events. The latter capacity
is correlated with specific EEG activity, as well as with temporal
lobe signs.23

Several personality inventories-the MMPI, the California Personality
Inventory (CPI), and Cattell's 16PF-have been remarkably consistent
in the description of people who display frequent temporal lobe
signs.24, 25, 26 On the one hand, these people are highly creative,
versatile, intuitive, and interested in philosophic or aesthetic
topics. However, scores on the temporal lobe scales are also positively
correlated with anxiety (specifically, ego weakness and performance
anxiety); mood swings; tension; and excessive, obsessive rumination,
as well as circumstantiality, wherein the person becomes "stuck" in
a train of thought and is unable to move beyond it. When thinking
is inefficient, they are prone to suspiciousness, delusions (e.g.,
interpreting everything that happens in personal terms, and associated
paranoid behavior), or the desire to prophesy and "spread
the word"; stereotyped thinking, and panic (especially abstract
in nature, generated by thoughts of death, such as death from nuclear
war). The single feature most often seen is mild to moderate hypomania
against a background of low-level depression. Considering the persistent
association between clinical mania and temporal lobe epilepsy,
and their shared treatment by some anticonvulsants (such as carbamazepine
or Tegretol,27 the occurrence of the hypomanic "spike" in
normal people who report frequent complex partial epileptic signs
lends further support to the temporal lobe continuum.

People who display temporal lobe lability are also hypnotically
suggest ib le. 28, 29 The more frequent the number of temporal
lobe signs, the more easily they dissociate, as defined by reports
of sensations of floating or spinning or visual imagery, during
routine hypnotic procedures, as well as the postepisodic partial
amnesia. Measurements of alpha activity over the temporal lobes
is correlated with experiences of odd smells, while the number
of temporal spikes is directly related to vivid imagery of early
childhood activities, especially references to imaginary playmates.

Not surprisingly, temporal lobe signs and belief in psi are correlated
with elevationson the Feelingscaleof the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator,30
a relationship that has been noted by others.31 People with these
profiles tend to become writers, actors, musicians, painters, poets,
and abstract thinkers. (Such people are frequently found in specific
vocations such as the public media, and the contribution of their
beliefswhich have a direct effect on a large number of people-to
the assessment of "visitor" experiences must still be
determined.)

Ternporal lobe processes and the "visitor" experience

If temporal lobe processes are involved in the "visitor" experience,
then the phenomenological patterns should be similar across experiences
and should effectively reflect the function of temporal lobe structures.
The concept is well supported by the findings of modem neuroscience.
It has been demonstrated that the behavioral profile of a developing
human is a function of that region of the brain that is displaying
the greatest relative metabolic rate.32 Ina similar manner, the
phenomenological experience of a human being will be dominated
by that portion of the brain that displays the greatest electrical
activity. The concept that the fabric of emotional experience reflects
the functions of the neuroanatomical substrate has been developed
by Three prototypic accounts of "visitor" experiences
offer ample support to the temporal lobe factor. These three are
Whitley Strieber's Communion,33 a classic UFO abduction report;
Agartha, by Meredith Young,34 a biography of a channeler, which
tells of an "otherdimensional" presence; and Gopi Krishna's
Kundalini,35 a description of the emergence of a mystical energy.
In all these accounts, the experiences were associated with the
predominant metaphor of the sense of a presence, swirling or vorticat
sensations, internal vibrations, floating sensations, alterations
in perception (seeing auras and glowing outlines around the edges
of objects), frank psi phenomena, and a profound sense of meaningfulness.
After the initial trigger experience, followed by intermittent
psychological depression, there was substantial cognitive restructuring.
Odd events that had happened throughout the person's life were
integrated and seen as "meaningful," environmental happenings
acquired a deep personal relevance, the person developed a conviction
that he was chosen, and a desire emerged to deliver the cosmic
message to mankind. The experience was invariably considered to
be "real."

Each account contains specific temporal lobe signs, which should
reflect the actual locus of the electrical lability within temporal
lobe structures. For example, Strieber's description of fundamentally
aversive sensations (associated with intense smells, hypervigilance,
and anal sphincter images) should reflect anomalous activity within
the anterior parahippocampal gyrus, with special involvement of
the amygdaloid complex and adjacent uncus. Meredith Young's account
of visual vibrations in the upper left visual field are virtually
pathognomic of electrical focus within Meyer's loop of the right
temporal lobe36 and are common correlates in females with verified
temporal lobe foci.37 Gopi Krishna presents a general profile dominated
by references to marked visual alterations and alimentary difficulties,
which suggests involvement of the insula and adjacent claustrum.

One of the most common features of the UFO experience is the encounter
with small humanoids who often have large heads, thus resembling
the fetus. There is evidence that these experiences are adult modifications
of perinatal memories.38,39 That the fetus has the cerebral capacity
to detect and consolidate experience has been established.40 A
vestigial convolution of the hippocampal system, the indusium griseum
(supracallosal gyrus), regresses following birth.41 This structure
contains the longitudinal striae that extend the entire length
of the corpus callosum and into the diagonal band of Broca, which
in turn interconnects with the amygdala and septum. During dream
states, which are characterized by massive activation of hippocampal-amygdatoid
pathways,42 these pathways and their correla, tive experiences
might be accessed but then modified during the process of translation
to adult neocortical activity. It should not be forgotten that "visitations" by
variously shaped small humanoids have been reported by patients
with active temporal lobe foci.43

Both theoretical44, 45 and cl in ica 146 evidence suggest that
transient neuroelectrical discrepancy between the left and right
temporal lobes is a precondition for the sense of a presence. Because
the right hemisphere displays a wide range of receptive capacity
(even during borderline arousal levels) as compared with the narrow
band of arousal displayed by the left hemisphere, a substantial
portion of the material that composes the "visitor" experience
should be acquired by incidental learning during twilight states.
The number of experiences could accumulate during the experient's
lifetime so that they began to operate as functionally independent
processes.47

The major origin of the functional commissurotomy between the
left and right temporal lobes48 could be caused by a reinforcement
history that empathized compartmentalization.49 Some religious
disciplines, such as Catholicism, are well known for facilitating
this development. Severe trauma, such as early sexual abuse, could
be equally effective, because of the consequent repression of unpleasant
memories serving as source material for the experience. The importance
of the temporal lobe factor in this process is strongly suggested
by the moderate intercorrelations in patient populations between
temporal lobe epilepsy, multiple personality, and early child abuse-50

Right hemispheric information may be accessed during sleep,51
especially if personal stress disrupts nocturnal periods, because
of both the bilateral coherence in amygdaloid-hippocampal activity
and the type of cortical arousal that constitute dream sleep.52
However, hypnosis could also facilitate access to this information.53,
54 This technique could contribute to the cognitive restructuring
of personal information, a process that has been found useful in
clinical settings. There is evidence that hypnosis may generate
phenomena, especially the experience of time loss or "missing
time,"55,56 If this procedure does create experiential changes,
then the technique itself might contribute to the production of
the UFO experience, Regression hypnosis should prove to be a powerful
tool, because-in only a few brief clinical interviews-it can facilitate
a functional association among the individual memories of unusual
and repressed experiences that are stored during the person's lifetime.

Since the right hemisphere operates at the syntactic level of
a fiveto six-year-old and with the vocabulary of a young adolescent,57
articulation of experiences would be initially difficult. Experiences
during the early stages of the "visitor" phenomenon should
be associated with alterations in right temporal lobe function;
such experiences include deficits in spatial orientation and spatial
memory or an interest in the mystical meaning of geometric shapes.
Factors that facilitate a discrepancy between the left and right
temporal lobes, such as lefthandedness or the pursuit of a vocation
that depends mainly on right temporal lobe function (music, art,
perception of subtle behavioral patterns) should be more evident
in the general population of "visitor" experients.

Conditions that may trigger the "visitor" experience

THESPECIFIC TRIGGER for the "visitor" experience, particularly
the type that is associated with UFO phenomena, has been hypothesized
to involve direct exposure to tectonic strain fields.58 People
whose houses are built over susceptible areas (e.g., fault lines)
may be exposed frequently to the displays of these fields, which,
while thought to be very focused and of brief duration, are very
intense. Because of the intense electrical lability of the temporal
lobes, their stimulation would generate the electrochemical changes
that could promote the "visitor" experience. Short pulses
of energetic stimuli would be optimal for facilitating the normal
burst firing pattern of the human amygdala.59

Burst firing of hippocampal neurons for only a few seconds between
1001-1z and 40OHz is sufficient to promote long-term potentiation.60
In fact, brief seizures can induce c-fos gene activity in the hippocampal
formation with generalization to the neocortex,61 an observation
that supports the concept of memory modification,62 because this
gene encodes a nuclear phosphoprotein that displays DNA binding.
We have found that exposure to low-intensity, extremely low-frequency
brain frequency fields evoke partial amnesia,63, 64 exacerbate
vestibular images, and alter suggestibility.65 The difficulty of
focusing applied magnetic fields in order to excite very small
areas (< I cml) of deep temporal lobe tissue is a primary technical
impedance.

The "visitor" experience may be evoked by other sources,
however. Deep temporal lobe structures are very sensitive to ACTH
(adrenocorticotrophic hormone) and gluticosteroids. Psychological
depression is associated with marked elevation in ACTH; consequently,
psychological depression (especially in people whose creativity
is coupled with temporal lobe transients), grief due to personal
crises, and other psychological trauma could generate the "visitor" experience.
A more common but more mundane form of the experience, associated
with grief, is the apparition experience following bereavement,66
which appears to be promoted by sudden increases in geornagnetic
activity.67 In addition, meditation or prayer, as, for example,
the repetition of a mantra, is perhaps the strongest verbal analogue
of kindling68 and can generate specific temporal lobe lability.69
If ACTH fragments are essential for normal amygdaloid kindling,70
then psychological stress may be a prerequisite for the maintenance
of the amygdaloid activity that mediates and promotes the perception
of the "visitor."

The "visitor" experience: A typical case

To date there have been few controlled studies to determine the
neuropsychological mechanisms of "visitor" experiences.
They have been reported by clinically normal people who display
many of the personality and phenomenological characteristics described
earlier. For example, in one case investigated by this researcher,
a 35-year-otd woman reported that she was visited by creatures
who surrounded her bed during the night and sometimes carried her
away. She could only sense their presence, because they vibrated
so quickly and reflected light in a strange way. They were "felt" to
be small creatures with large heads and eyes like those of infants.

The creatures seemed obsessed with her sexual organs and tried
to operate upon her. Wheals and, later, warts were reported around
the pubic area and on the left hand. Except for a mild elevation
on the hypomania and F (validity) scales of the MMPI, she responded
like a normal middle-aged female. The only remarkable features
were her enhanced suggestibility, an early history of sexual abuse,
and a recent episode with cocaine, about six months before the
incident. The t, visitors" disappeared with carbamazepine,
a drug that is specific for complex partial epilepsy and hypomania.

Although this treatment may not be beneficial in all such cases,
its results empathize the importance of approaching this phenomenon
from a neuropsychological basis.

"Visitor" experiences have been persistent phenomena
throughout the phenomenological history of man. Often they have
been associated with extraordinary creativity7l and intuitive insight
concerning human behavior. Their forms have followed the changing
fabric of human culture. They have ranged from the nocturnal Harpies,
succubi, and incubi that tormented or ravaged their helpless victims
to guardian angels that promised forbidden knowledge. Their themes
have reflected the construction of the human limbic system. Their
operations were functions of the unconscious cognitive processes
that guide human thinking. When sex and sin were the repressed
desires, the "visitors" were cast from that perspective.
Now, with the hopes of immortality melting into the last residue
of religious delusions, the "visitor" experiences have
been transmuted once again. 1. H. Evans, Visions, Apparitions and Alien Visitors (Well ingborough,
Northamptonshire, England: Aquarian Press, 1984).

3. P. Gloor, "Temporal Lobe Epilepsy: Its Possible Contribution
to the Understanding of the Significance of the Amygdala and of
Its Interaction with Neocortical-Temporal Mechanisms." In
The Neurobiology of the Amygdala, ed. B. E. Eleftheriou (New York:
Plenum, 1972), pp. 423-457.

14. J. R. Stevens, "Sleep Is for Seizures: A New Interpretation
of the Role of Phasic Events in Sleep and Wakefulness." In
Sleep and Epilepsy, ed. M. B. Sherman, M. N. Shouse, and P. Passouant
(New York: Academic Press,